but two years ago, the city quietly dropped the smoking ban. gwendolyn boyd is the city's chief of police. >> we realized that at best we may save 5% on our insurance premium. but now we're having a problem with trying to recruit and hire highly-qualified candidates, and we're competing against agencies that do not have that policy. >> did dropping the policy dramatically change that? were you able to find qualified people? >> i would have to say unequivocally yes. >> officer juan mayato believes that the city ultimately learned that those smokers more often than not made pretty good cops. >> i mean, what does smoking have to do with the way you perform your job out here? there's a lot of people that smoke that are well qualified for this job, and it doesn't affect them. and, you know, they couldn't hire them. >> that was the problem cnn faced. and after 13 years of a ban on hiring smokers, it rescinded the policy. even so, lewis maltby says it's gonna be near impossible to marshal support for smokers. >> smoking has become more than a health i